I. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a methods and systems for providing a visualization graph on a computer.
II. Background Information
Visualization graphs are tools that allow data to be handled and displayed on a display device according to certain criteria. The primary objective of navigation graphs is to display systems of complex interrelationships between entities, such as in a database or on the World Wide Web. Visualization graphs can be based on a semantic net including all entity types that occur where the considered entities are linked to each other by various kinds of relations. A visualization graph represents entities as boxes, often referred to as “nodes” of the graph, and relations as lines between the boxes.
A common way of solving the problem of graphical layout is to apply a physical simulation where all entities are treated as masses repulsing each other and the relations are treated as elastic lines trying to pull connected entities together. By double-clicking on a box, other entities that are directly related to the corresponding entity (but which may not yet in the graph) and their relations to other entities in the graph are included. In some implementations the double-clicked entity then moves to the center of the graph (it becomes the “focus” entity) and other nodes, which are too distant (measured in number of relations on the shortest path) from it are removed from the graph.
However, conventional visualization graphs suffer drawbacks. One problem with conventional visualization graphs is that when changes in the graphs are initiated, for example, when a node is double clicked on in order to include further entities related to that node into the graph, using conventional repulsion based simulation approached (which are indeterministic), a problem arises in making room for the entities of the group. In particular, if a node placed close to a second node is “exploded”, the repulsion between the entities is so great that the system takes an unacceptable duration to converge. Thus, the user is faced with a graph that is slow to navigate.